A couple things wrong with the modern church · 9:50pm Feb 1st, 2021
One is from 2:12-2:48 in this 1 hr. 20 min. long video. My jaw still drops after watching that part thrice now;
False teachers and false teachings. Even the title of the video ("GOD...Please Buy Me A Jet | Today`s Church...Years Later") says what's wrong.
The second thing is mixing politics and religion. My mother saw a Republican in the government - a Christian - who was accused of being possessed by the devil and who has endured death threats... including from people calling themselves Christians. It's easy to claim someone is possessed by the devil, harder to prove it. I'm not saying that satanic possession does not happen, but when I think of that, I tend to think of someone becoming violent and unstable, or of preaching falsehoods. The issue of death threats is what I wanted to warn people about, though. Christ followers should never threaten people with physical harm or death (except in necessary self defense, such as threatening to shoot someone who invades the house or who is trying to directly physically harm one or one's family, and even then only as a last resort).
Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the way the election turned out. I don't like the thought of gun restrictions, or of radical leftism (such as Antifa-style stuff) pretending to be liberalism sneaking into our homes, schools, churches, etc. I don't like abortion being legalized. I don't like the thought of students of faith being muzzled, nor their teachers. I don't like a lot of what's on the liberal side of things. But one day in January told me that I was wrong to pick the other man. And this bit of news just confirms it. If people who claim Christ as their savior are threatening to kill other people - other Christians... then those people don't value Christ as much as they do their political candidates or beliefs.
I must admit, it's... difficult to try to put political beliefs aside to serve Christ alone. As someone who loves gun rights, for example, I don't like the thought that if the government were to repeal 2A, that I'd have to just give up any guns I owned without rebelling against the government. It's something I wrestle with; the American culture within me shouts to rebel if such a thing were to pass. But government has been instituted by God for a reason; to provide law and order, to punish evil (Romans 13:1-7). And even if it could be legitimized to rebel against authority in a military manner, it still has the spirit of being done for myself rather than for a Bigger Cause. I admit, that's something hard for me, and I do try sometimes in my head to legitimize revolt if something I support were to be banned by the government. That doesn't make me right to think it, nor any less of a hypocrite if it is always wrong to rebel against government (https://www.gotquestions.org/gun-confiscation.html).
I feel that these two issues - ministers looking for material wealth instead of the spiritual good of their flocks, and people claiming to be Christ followers threatening to kill other people - are important to notify people about. To paraphrase my therapist, "I can't wait until politics become boring again." Amen to that indeed.
May the Lord Jesus save, protect, guide, and nurture you all.
As long as influential 'Christians' continue to claim that the opposition, spiritual or political, is being guided by the Christian concept of a Devil : you're going to have people who act by how they feel they ought to respond when in contact with someone they believe to being guided by whom Christians credit as the root of all evil.
And as long as people insist that the American Government was created and meant to be guided by the Christian God , you're going to have people who respond accordingly when it looks like the Government is rebelling against the Christian God.
It's easy to label the rioters as radicalized extremists, false Christians, misguided, or what have you.
The uncomfortable truth is that those men and women are our neighbors, fellow countrymen, ect.
Earthly glory is a helluva drug. By no coincidence, it is a chief aim of bad theology. Christ himself defied expectations that he’d be a conqueror, or the later fancy that he’d be a bread-king. That contrast is worth bearing in mind as we seek the good.
I likely know the lawmaker you speak of. Last time I checked, I thought we wanted people who would stand firm in their convictions in the face of temptation, whether for earthly glory or otherwise. And by that same token, I should think that conflating faith in Christ with showing absolute, unflinching loyalty to one man—and not the man Christ Jesus—constitutes aiming in the wrong direction. Especially when that man’s ways deviate from what even a cursory reading of Christ’s words might lead us to think appropriate.
We should be capable of something more than outright hostility or equivocation toward those who point out gaps in our positions, whether we’re predisposed to liking them or not. Of course people want to their laws to be shaped by their beliefs; but this isn’t a theocracy, and you’re not always going to get 100% of what you want. You actually wouldn’t want that anyway—because it’s all too easy for one man to co-opt that earthly glory train, and steer it toward his own advantage.
The Founders didn’t want that, either.